Victors At Last
by TayNeyNey
Summary: Haymitch is struggling through his life, numb to it all. When he meets Johanna Mason, thinks begin to change. Small story about the complicated relationship between the two, and how they became friends. Rated for suggestive content.


Haymitch sighs as he exits the train. Another year, another Games, another set of children he's seeing off to slaughter. Well, he thinks looking back at the two bumbling teens behind him, at least he can get as much alcohol as he wants here, and it goes down easier than the stuff back home. Effie comes over and starts tweeting at them in her Capitol voice and Haymitch squints at her. She teeters on her ridiculous heels and her hair is particularly blinding this year, but the two tributes from 12 watch her desperately. They're both so desperate, too desperate. Haymitch knew as soon as they were pulled onto the stage that neither would make it. Most people think the victors are made hard by the arena, but the truth is all of the victors were hard before; the arena only makes them into stone.

"Now, it's only the 72nd Hunger Games," Effie trills and Haymitch can't hold back his snort. "What?" she turns, snapping at him. Whatever patience or humor Effie had once had for Haymitch as a victor, he had used it up years ago. She despises him now. "What is so funny?"

"Only the 72nd?" he replies, cruelly mocking her accent. "Do you have any idea how many kids killed that is?" He doesn't wait for her reply, and he doesn't feel guilty at the fear in the new tributes eyes. He simply stalks off. Effie is just another air headed person from the Capitol, fed their lies from birth so that she doesn't recognize anything else. It's rare that she gets under his skin. As for the tributes, they need to know the truth of it. Thousands have died, and if they want to live, they have to be strong. Stronger than any of those thousands were.

But they aren't.

Haymitch sighs again and heads into the Training Center. There's a bar downstairs for the mentors, and the bartender knows Haymitch intimately.

He's sitting at the bar, has been since three hours ago when they arrived. Nothing happens the first day anyway. It's all show and shit, as far as he's concerned. Most of the mentors are down here, though few are drinking. Chaff came up earlier, chatting as usual but Haymitch didn't have the heart for it today. A few others came up as well but they all departed soon after. Haymitch gave off isolation like a stink, as repellent as his stench of alcohol.

A sudden hush falls over the mentors, even Finnick stopping his antics. Now there was a boy Haymitch hadn't expected to win, but he could see the stone in Finnick clearly now. Poor boy was the Capitol's favorite, and he had no choice but to comply. No doubt he had a date lined up tonight. It isn't until a few moments later that Haymitch's slightly addled brain realizes why the mentors went quiet. Johanna Mason entered the bar.

Haymitch cracks a slight smile as he eyes the girl. She stands tall, proud and strong. Such a contrast to the way she looked last year before she entered the arena. Cunning, that one, like a fox. Even Haymitch had not seen past the façade. She's quite a pretty thing, he muses, dark hair and dark eyes, but firm build from throwing her axe. Deadly, he remembers, drawing up hazy moments from last year. She was seventeen when she won, so she is eighteen now. She looks young to him. Funny, wasn't it, how young they all look when he himself was only sixteen?

He turns back to his drink without much thought after that, and so it is with surprise that the next time the stool next to him scrapes against the ground and he looks over, Johanna Mason stares back at him.

She isn't smiling as she stares back, her lips turned down at the corners in a manner that looks permanent. Her eyes are dark, shadowed, hard, like all the victors but deeper. There is a pain there Haymitch recognizes. And it is then that he knows.

He wants to growl at her to leave him the hell alone but now that he knows, he can't. Damn bleeding heart, he growls to himself in his head. After all these years and he still isn't completely stone.

"You aren't going to tell me to get lost?" Johanna tilts her head and Haymitch keeps an eye on her from the corner of his vision as he stares into his drink. Her voice is deeper than he remembers as well. It is hollow, and he knows why.

"No point, is there?" he mumbles.

She doesn't reply and they lapse into silence, Haymitch shifting uncomfortably. He doesn't make friends well, not anymore. He doesn't see the point, not when the Capitol can kill so easily. He's liable to make a mistake, has proven it in the past. No reason to get anyone else killed.

"You aren't going to ask me anything?" Johanna demands, sounding the slightest bit mad.

"And what should I ask you, sweetheart?" Haymitch drawls, still refusing to look at her. He doesn't want to see that pain again. He used to see it every day in the mirror until he had the mind to destroy all the ones in his house.

Johanna fidgets slightly. "All those others starting asking things. Everyone asked me things when I got back home. Aren't you at least going to ask if I'm excited to be a mentor this year?"

Haymitch snorts. "Only damn fools are excited to be mentors, and I haven't met a victor yet that was a damn fool."

For some reason this makes her smile, but Haymitch can see the anger and pain behind it. She laughs, loud and harsh, hardly a laugh at all. "Well I did something foolish, so you've met one now."

Haymitch doesn't want to know what she did, not when he knows how she was punished. And he knows how she was punished. Isn't it how the Capitol always threatens them into compliance, their victors? Such a pretty picture they paint, but under that surface so much unrest and anger. He had seen it his first year back, had already felt its cruel sting.

But Johanna is desperate to tell someone, and she opens her mouth. "They-"

"I know."

She blinks stupidly at him and then narrows her eyes. "How?"

And then finally, Haymitch looks at her. She is still made of stone, but he can see that weakness in her eyes. Or the absence of weakness really. All the victors have one weak spot, one place that can be exploited after they win. Those who still have their weak spots look like stone, but those whose weak spots have been taken, they just look like stone that has lost its shine. "It isn't that hard to see," Haymitch answers finally, staring at her just as she stares at him. He can tell it unsettles her, to have someone look so easily into her eyes. She's a killer after all, but they all are here. Bonded together by their brutality, that's what the victors are.

"They killed your family too," Johanna states.

"Sure did," Haymitch's lips twist into a dark smile, made of glass and barbed wire and fueled by anger and drink. "Killed my mother, my younger brother, and my girl, and all because I used one of their toys against them."  
"I wouldn't let them sell my body."

Haymitch turns more fully to stare at her, surprised yet again by Johanna Mason. She sits up straighter under his gaze, so damn tough already. He wasn't this tough when he came back, he knows. The group of those who've been punished is small, but Johanna has just become a member, and all because she refused to be prostituted out.

"Why not?" Haymitch asks, mostly out of curiosity. He remembers when he was younger, more handsome, less drunk and disgusting. He remembers the nights spent with strangers. He remembers the profit the Capitol made, the profit he felt dirty for making himself. But he always did it. He was lonely and broken and so drunk half the time that he didn't care. It didn't matter. The Capitol had already taken everything, what was his body? Just a useless thing keeping him here, in this hellish place.

Johann's eyes narrow and that mouth of hers puckers. Her spine is ramrod straight, and he notices that she is slightly more than just attractive. No wonder the Capitol wanted to use her. "I didn't want to be used like that," she says, voice firm and strong. "I didn't want to give them that part of me, as well. They already had so much, why should they take that?"

Haymitch nearly turns red when he reads into the deeper meaning, and he is suddenly reminded how young eighteen still is. He has never thought of a victor as young before, but he wonders if Johanna is still young, at least in one way.

She answers his question with a brittle smile of her own, almost as grotesque as his own. "Well jokes on me for hoping I could chose who I slept with, right? Took away the only person I thought I wanted. Took away everyone else I loved too, for extra measure I suppose. Or hell, maybe just for fun."

Haymitch has no idea what to say to this. The damn girl was a virgin, an innocent, hoping for that love they talk about, those people who dare romanticize this life. She was waiting, and the Capitol took it all away, even her boy. "I'm sorry," he sighs, turning back to his drink. He always pitied himself so much for the loss of his girl, but at least he had had that with her. He had known her as intimately as a person could know another.

"I'm not," Johanna stares boldly at him, and Haymitch finds himself surprised yet again. Seconds ago he had thought her young because she was still innocent in one aspect, but he does not think her young now. She is old, as old as all the victors are. It is an age you cannot reach merely through time. It is the aging done by bloodshed, by loss, by carnage, by war. It is too damn old for any human to rightfully be. But here they are, all the victors, too damn old.

"I'm not sorry," she continues, staring straight ahead, her head held high. "Even if I had slept with him, they still would have killed him, and that would have only made it worse, I think. The Capitol took them all, but now they have nothing. They can't control me now, can't make me do anything I don't want to do."

Haymitch admires her for pretending, but he can hear what she isn't saying. The Capitol has nothing to control her with, but now she has nothing too. Nothing but her virginity, which she thought was so precious. He doesn't think she thinks that now. "So what are you goanna do, sweetheart?" he finds himself asking, though a voice is telling him it's a bad idea. But here is this girl, a girl he knows as well as he knows himself, and they are so alike. Here is this girl who knows his pain as only a few know it. Here is this girl, and here they are, and there the Capitol is, all around them. And he wants to know what she is going to do.

"I want to tell them to go fuck themselves," she smiles, so pretty despite the nasty words coming out of her mouth. "I want to rub it into their faces that they have nothing to hold over me, and I want them to know that what they've done hasn't affected me."

"And how do you plan to show them that?" But Haymitch thinks he knows. Johanna smiles, and it rings with danger and revenge and a plan. He doesn't stop her when she leans forward, and he doesn't lean away when she whispers her plan into his ear. She is only eighteen, one half of his mind whispers. But eighteen is old when someone has survived the Hunger Games. Eighteen is ancient when twenty three others had to die so you could make it another year.

And so Haymitch finds himself answering her bright, guarded yet hopeful eyes. "Well, sweetheart, I think I can help you out." He leaves his drink on the counter and gets off his stool, surprisingly still stable. Johanna smiles again, and he doesn't see any doubt or worry or fear in her eyes. She is strong, stronger than him.

They leave together, her wrapped under his arm by her own doing. She sways her hips as they leave, and throws her hair, showing off the body she would not let the Capitol have. Every other victor there watches them go, and they all know where they are going. It isn't unusual here, in the bar at the Training Center. Nothing is unusual here.

In the elevator Johanna practically hums, her eyes glued to the security camera watching them, and Haymitch can't help but laugh.

"What?" she asks, that razor smile still on her face.

"I like you," Haymitch responds. "You're all fire. The Capitol made a mistake, doing what they did to you."

Her smile hardens and her eyes flash. "You're alright yourself, Haymitch. And soon the Capitol is going to realize their mistake. One day, I'll make them pay."  
It's a promise to the Capitol and to him and to herself, and Haymitch can only shake his head in slight amusement and appreciation. This girl is different. This girl is dangerous to the Capitol, and for the first time in a long time, Haymitch is glad that somebody out there is dangerous to the Capitol.

The elevator stops at his floor, and they exit, hands clasped. Johanna flips off the camera in the elevator and Haymitch laughs again. He agreed to this because she wanted it. He agree to this because it would piss of the Capitol. He agreed to this because he couldn't think of a reason why not to. But now he is glad he did. Now, as she follows him into his room, Haymitch is glad he met her. Maybe it is odd, to seek this kind of comfort from her, maybe it is wrong. But it is the only kind of comfort they have now, and Haymitch hopes that they can be friends.

When she turns to him and raises an eyebrow in challenge, Haymitch steps forward without a second thought, and accepts some of her fire as his own.

He sees her twice more that year as they watch their tributes get slaughtered, and he is glad for her company. He was right when he said she had aged as all the victors aged. She was not a girl, looking for love. She was as broken as the rest of them, just looking for something. She never cried or showed outward weakness, but sometimes Haymitch could catch a flickering in her eyes, a wavering of her resolution, and it was then that he would go to her. It was then that they would remember why they were broken, together, and they would remember their anger, together.

The year of Katniss and Peeta, he only sees her once, the first night there. He sneaks her in after his two tributes have disappeared into their foreign rooms, and he tells Johanna of the girl from the Seam, the girl with a familiar fire burning in her eyes. Johanna lays on his arm, using it as a pillow with the sheet pulled haphazardly over herself, and she smiles. She hopes that he is right, that this girl will show the Capitol that they are not merely puppets but people. When Katniss and Peeta both come out alive, he meets Johanna's eyes across the room where the victors all sit in surprised silence, and he can see her burning up with ideas. He can see her joy; he can practically hear her laughter at the way the Capitol has been made a fool. But he feels fear, fear she hasn't and won't consider. Still, it starts his head spinning with ideas, and he leaves to go see his victors.

He sees her for the first time the next year in the elevator, and he unashamedly studies her body. She winks at him, and he smiles back, his brain turning with other thoughts, though he remembers their nights together. She leaves, and he doubts she expects him to visit her this year. He doesn't. But he does include her in his plan, in his rebellion. Her eyes dance when she hears of it, and she places her hands on either side of his face and kisses him.

"Thank you, Haymitch," she states, bluntly and plainly, just as all her actions are. "Thank you for this chance."

He nods at her, frowning slightly. "I can't guarantee your safety Johanna."

She laughs, that same bark of a laugh he heard the night he met her. "There is no such thing as safe with the Capitol in charge." She pats his cheek once more and then sways away and he watches her go. She is one of his closest friends, and he worries for her, but he respects her, has always respected her. Katniss is the girl on fire, but Johanna is the embers that were there first. He will never forget.

After the Games and their escape, the guilt of leaving her behind eats him up, not as much as his guilt over Peeta, but whenever he manages to ignore that guilt, the guilt over her comes rearing up. He left Johanna. The thought sits sour in his stomach, though he knows she would understand. She is strong, he reminds himself constantly. She can survive the Capitol.

Still, when the rescue mission is suggested, he stresses that they should look for her, and when they land his heart is glad to see her there, though it drops when he sees what they have done to her. He visits her in the hospital and she spits curses at him when the pain is bad. But when the pain calms down and he stays, she almost apologizes and says she understands. They talk about the war and how it is going, they express their fears, the ones he has left unsaid. They talk about Katniss, and it amuses Haymitch that Johanna hardly likes the girl, though the two are becoming closer, he can tell. But mostly, he just sits with his friend, glad she sparked his life again those five years ago.

When the war is won and over, he still sees her on occasion. They fought over her voting for one last Hunger Games, but he knows why she did it. He remembers how long he dreamt of killing those people in the Capitol before he realized how futile that would be. He has to remind himself that Johanna lost her loved ones not so long ago, that though she is strong, that pain is still fresh.

Once he had wondered if they might have something more once the Capitol was no longer in charge, but now he knows that was just an errant thought. They are both too broken to have anything. But every year, at least once a year, they come together, and they savor this victory, their victory, the only one they celebrate. They were victors for years, but now they finally feel pride at what they've done. Now, as they lay together in bed, they can finally smile and talk about their loved ones. Now that fire she brought back into his life can finally go out, softly, gently, as they build scar tissue over their wounds. She is his closest friend, now, and she will always be, and Haymitch smiles, truly smiles, as she talks about that boy so long ago she wanted to wait for. When she is done, he will tell her about the girl, the one who had his heart.

And they will go on.


End file.
